Zoë Thompson, instructed by DAC Beachcroft and NFU Mutual, secured a finding of fundamental dishonesty in the case of Malambo v WM Morrisons. The Claimant was involved in a rear end shunt with the Defendant’s lorry on an M25 slip road. He claimed that the accident caused him a brain injury that was so serious that he had to give up his job as a sales executive and move into lower paid part time work. He also alleged a host of other injuries including PTSD, loss of sexual function, lower back, neck and shoulder injuries. Extensive expert evidence was obtained on both sides by experts in 7 different disciplines. The Claimant failed the effort testing on neuropsychological tests carried out by two experts, but his expert maintained that this was not exaggeration but due to language difficulties and the Claimant having a headache. A few years after the accident, video footage emerged of the index accident which demonstrated that the Claimant’s account of the accident was wrong in several key respects, including that there was no loss of consciousness and the speed of the collision had been grossly overstated by the Claimant. The Claimant’s psychiatric expert nonetheless maintained that the Claimant could still have been genuine in his recollection and that his incorrect memories could have been caused by the trauma of the accident.
Rejecting the Claimant’s case, the Court found that the Claimant had lied about the severity of the collision and faked significant injuries, fooling many treating doctors and experts, for financial gain. He was ordered to pay the Defendant’s significant costs of the litigation, with an order that those costs are to be enforced against him pursuant to CPR 44.16, on the basis that the claim was fundamentally dishonest.
Zoë Thompson is highly experienced in defending large loss claims on the basis of fundamental dishonesty. Her profile can be accessed here.
Her clerks are Joe Gibson and Phillip Spencer.